


why doesn't he speak of dreams, of the leaves

by sugarybowl



Category: Inception (2010), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M, M/M, So much angst, but hopefully pretty pain?, shadowhunter!arthur, shadowhunters au, so much with the lyrical prose, this is just pain in here, warlock!eames
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:53:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: Try as he might to keep his relations with Shadowhunters brief, he knows enough about them. He knows enough to keep his interactions businesslike, his involvement minimal. He knows that there is no greater sin among these people than a sin of love – the love between two sworn to one another only for the sake of battle.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thepoeticflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepoeticflower/gifts).



“Ah, the newly minted Morningwright,” Eames sighs, leaning heavily against his doorframe. “Would I be correct in assuming you are bleeding heavily under that rain soaked look?”

The boy in front of him was no more than that, a boy of nineteen if he remembered correctly. He was a beautiful boy, even if at that moment he could more easily be described as an over grown but thoroughly drowned cat. The pulled-up hoodie gave him the look of a neighborhood boy, perhaps out too late and three drinks too deep to find his way home. Boys like this washed up on Eames’ doorstep with enough regularity not to ruffle any neighbors. Perhaps that was the young man’s intention in his choice of attire. It was certainly not the look of a Nephilm, so proud in their ever-present leathers.

“Can I come in?” the boy whispers.

“I dare say you don’t look as if you could afford my troubles, Mr. Morningwright,” he says with a joking smile, “but seeing as it would undoubtedly enrage your tutor – do come in.”

The young man shuffles into the hallway of Eames’s home, trailing Spring rain all over the ancient rug. His demeanor is so quiet, so shy for a child of the Angel. Perhaps it could all be attributed to the newness of it all, the small awe of those who come into great power through sweat rather than blood.

“You would tell me if you were bleeding, wouldn’t you?”

The boy nods and Eames does not find the gesture to clarify the matter at all.

“How does the life of the Shadowhunter suit you, Mr. Morningwright. You must pardon my curiosity, I find the ascended quite fascinating.”

“Arthur,” he answers quietly.

“Pardon?”

“I would prefer it if you called me Arthur,” he says more firmly.

“My apologies, I thought you would like to hear the sound of your new name resonate a while longer before it got old. How long has it been…a year?”

“Three.”

“My… time does fly by. What are you here for Arthur? I am quite certain you can’t afford me, but many a duller looking thing than yourself has gotten away with a discount.”

 “We need a glamour,” the boy says, finally lifting up his eyes to meet Eames’. He’s choked silent at the sight. Arthur’s gaze is so anguished, Eames swears he has seen men commit atrocities with less torment in their eyes.

“What sort of glamour,” Eames asks, all business for lack of a better reaction.

“Something to cover these,” the boy says, his voice tight with the effort not to waver as he pulls up his sleeves to indicate the dark runes that mark his skin.

“Don’t tell me you regret it,” Eames whispers, “darling, this thing you’ve done cannot be taken back.”

“I need to – we need to hide them,” Arthur affirms with a sudden and violent desperation, “and hide ourselves before they strip us of them.”

“Arthur, tell me what’s happened,” Eames asks, in the gentlest voice he can manage. Perhaps, he thinks too late, a gentle concern is more than he could bear.

Arthur crumples, less like a thing with cut strings and more like a flower that withers.

He kneels beside him, wondering if he can and should forget that this crying broken boy in front of him is a weapon, forged from the blood of a Heavenly Host and the harsh welding of the unforgiving Clave.

“What have –“

“Mal,” Arthur chokes out, “has fallen in love.”

“With you?”

Eames can’t help but gasp this question out. Try as he might to keep his relations with Shadowhunters brief, he knows enough about them. He knows enough to keep his interactions businesslike, his involvement minimal. He knows that there is no greater sin among these people than a sin of love – the love between two sworn to one another only for the sake of battle. A people who would entwine two souls only to make them better at killing, while making any other kind of love between them punishable in the extreme … Eames is rarely disgusted by anything but he has always been disgusted by this.

“No,” Arthur says, in something that sounds like a half-sobbed laugh, “Angel, no.”

“Well what then?”

“A mundane,” Arthur says miserably, “a mundane of all things.”

“Ah,” Eames says, with a depressing understanding. The Nephilim seem to have a proclivity toward prohibiting anything but that which strengthens the mettle of their warriors.

“You know,” Eames says softly, “that she can make that choice and you would not be punished for it.”

“You’d call that not being punished,” Arthur scoffs, “to have her taken from me. To be parted from the other half of my soul? A parabatai is not a friend it is – “

“I know,” Eames agrees, “darling, forgive me. I do know. It is only some among your people, well, they… they value their station above their soul.”

“Her people,” Arthur says, no longer sobbing but fierce – full of rage and conviction, “will be my people. And wherever she goes I will –“

“And nothing but death will part you,” Eames finishes, “I believe you, Arthur, I do.”

Eames is reminded, like a wave, the way they had captured his unimpressionable mind. Arthur sat upright with more school supplies than an overachieving high schooler, dregs and elites all but meaningless to him. He was a child with nothing who had been given the Sight to everything and he was determined to take it. Then there was Mallorie Bellefleur, who was born into this power, who knew the world was her oyster. Not just the Shadow world, but any world in which she could strike her eyes and her smile and the bells of her laugh and get her way. And yet she was lovely and loving; she was kind and giving and heartbreakingly devoted.  Eames had been interested to see if her power extended to turning the interest of a boy who had such an obvious disinclination for the female form. He supposes, after all, she found a way around that. Arthur so clearly adored her from the second she corrected his sparring, that it didn’t matter that he would never want her. In fact, it made them perfect for one another, for he would adore her and she would protect him and all of their people would laud them in the perfect untainted love which made them stronger weapons.

And now here they were, Mal determined to get her way and Arthur determined to give it to her.

“Will you help me?” the boy whispers, all his bravado folded under his hope. Oh, Eames thinks, what else could he do when he stood here in evidence of them. Mal getting her way, Arthur breaking himself to perfection, and Eames incapable of turning away from them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a jump back in time, to an even younger Arthur.

Arthur is fourteen and heartbroken. He digs his body further into the corner that his bed makes with the wall and pulls his headphones further down. This way he can pretend not to listen to the shouting downstairs or the more concerning noises coming from outside his window. His Walkman can’t perform miracles like that, so he hears words like _investment_ and _mistake_ and _responsibility_ ; the kind of words his step-father uses to describe the situation they’ve come up against. Package-deal, used to be the way the man referred to him. Now with his mother dead he’s more like a tepid and unappealing left over, even if not in so many words.

“Arthur!” he hears past the heavy bass pounding by his ears, “your ride’s here!”

Arthur snatches the headphones off his head and determinedly does not look out the window, even though looking away won’t quiet the tapping and giggling he can hear behind him. His eyes betray him - or maybe it’s his mind – but he can’t help glancing up just once before he steps out the door at the girl made of leaves with teeth like thorns and eyes like precious stones peering back at him through the glass.

His step-father isn’t horrible to him, doesn’t beat him or scream at him directly. He just wants out of this life that he didn’t sign up for, Arthur can hardly blame him for that. When he shuffles downstairs to meet his aunt on their doorstep he reminds himself not to blame her either, because she has three small kids and no space in her apartment for him. _No one to blame_ , he tells himself repeatedly, _no one._

“Thank you for driving me, Aunt Lucy,” he says softly as he climbs into the minivan.

He doesn’t mean to upset her but he sees the discomfort in her face. He knows she wishes he were a bad kid, rotten and angry, so that she wouldn’t feel compelled to excuse herself.

“Oh, Arthur it’s not trouble at all,” she says as she buckles in, “you know that… you know we would take you in if we could…”

“I know, Aunt Lucy,” he says, making his best effort at a smile.

She drives him over to the therapist’s office in silence, probably feeling guilty all the same. They all blame themselves even though there’s no one to blame. There’s no one to blame, no one to blame. He looks out the window and keeps his shoulders set when a dark hulking figure seems to stalk along with the car in impossible strides until his Aunt makes a sharp left.

He waves goodbye to her and checks himself in with the receptionist, who looks at his young skinny frame and over his shoulder for a parent or a parole officer. But there isn’t anyone there.

“Dr. Truehill will be with you in a moment,” she says, in a practiced sedate tone.

Dr. Truehill is a clean-cut man in his 50s, with a dark suit and the top button of his shirt neatly buttoned. He seems to match the décor of his office, dark and cold all over. The only source of color in the room is the red of the polished stones that sit at the center of his cufflinks.

“Arthur Bishop,” he says as he sits behind his cherry wood desk and looks over some papers.

“Just Arthur,” he corrects.

“Do you not hold your ancestry in esteem, Mr. Bishop?”

“I don’t know anything about my ancestors,” Arthur says firmly, “my father never bothered to tell me about them, or to meet me for that matter.”

The man makes noise that he cannot decipher.

“So just Arthur, then.”

“Yes,” he says, exhausted already, “just Arthur.”

“It says here your mother has recently passed,” he hums, “my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Arthur says softly, since he has learned this is the only acceptable response to condolences.

“Tell me Arthur, what effect has this tragedy had on your hallucinations?”

Arthur swallows, looking away and towards the dark dull floor.

“I don’t hallucinate.”

“You’re right,” the man says, “you don’t. But you certainly see things other people around you cannot.”

Arthur looks up to meet the man’s eyes, finding him steady and calm.

“What are you –“

“I am a therapist for young people who do not need a therapist,” he says, crossing his hands in front of him, “but cannot find anyone to believe them. I believe you, Arthur.”

“But I haven’t told you anything to believe.”

“You have not. You have also studiously not mentioned the other occupant in this room.”

A drop of cold dread drops into Arthur’s stomach as he allows his eyes to follow what he has been so carefully avoiding, a writhing horrible creature – something directly out of a nightmare that he is not inventive enough for – shackled to the office wall. He must have been five when he first saw them, the horrible and beautiful, the impossible things. Things that glittered over ponds and things that crawled along alleys. He was seven when his mother first screamed and cried at him to stop, because no she couldn’t see and couldn’t he please be a normal boy?

“I apologize that I’ve not something more pleasant for you to look at, but this is the sort of thing I’d want to know you can handle with aplomb.”

“What thing would that be,” Arthur says, too clever for fourteen, too ready to defend himself from the foretold horrors of an institution.

“The manacled demon just there,” he says, pointing over his shoulder right towards the horrid creature.

“It is completely harmless in this state I assure you,” the man-not-therapist says, “look.” He takes a poker from the nearby fireplace and stabs one of the things maybe-hands. It shrieks something awful but somehow Arthur thinks it sounds more offended than in pain.

“How can you see it,” Arthur whispers, with his voice sounding hoarse, “no one can ever see them.”

“Arthur there are a great many that can,” the man says, putting the poker back in place and returning to his seat, “but unfortunately not as many as there was in former days. That is why I have a proposition for you.”

Now with the succinct permission to believe and accept and acknowledge that the thing exists, Arthur finds that he cannot take his eyes away from it.

“What sort of proposition,” he whispers, because he knows that the man can hear.

“To help rid the world of these abominations,” he says, as if proposing a casual lunch, “to join the ranks of those gifted by the Angel –“

“Are you sure you don’t need a therapist yourself?”

“Quite sure,” the man says, with an unamused smile. “Tell me Arthur, if not this, where else would you go?”

“The Army will take me in a few years,” Arthur says, eyes still set on a monster his logic can’t explain.

“The Army will have you fighting other men,” Truehill says solemnly, “in wars started by yet other men. Little wars in the little histories of little men. For that, I offer you the highest war, of man and Angels against the shadows of demons that set to wreck all the little men and their little wars in this little world.”

“There aren’t that many,” he finds himself saying, perhaps stupidly.

“Not that you can see,” Truehills says with a nod, “for you are not of the blood of Angels, not purely anyway. If you were of our people then you could see how freely they roam and slither through the world, how much chaos and death they bring and leave unexplained. Which brings us back to our proposition.”

“To join your war,” Arthur says, finally wrenching his eyes away from the thing and focusing solely on the man in front of him.

“To train,” the man corrects, “to study of our world and practice in our ways and mold yourself perfect. And then, perhaps, if you are lucky – you will be granted the gift of the Angel and become as true a Nephilm as any born one.”

“You aren’t making any sense,” Arthur laughs out dryly, to cover up the panic of how much sense the man is making.

“Your mother is dead,” the man says, with no attempt at compassion, “and for all intents your world is ended. I offer you a new world, where you will have a place and purpose, where you have a people among whom you can find honor and family. I dare think that you won’t turn it away.”

-

His stepfather is relieved nearly to tears to hear of a special immersive ROTC program that will take him, feed and clothe him, raise him until he is old enough to enlist. His stepfather doesn’t ask any questions while he tries to mask his relief as worry and Arthur, for the enormous comfort of never seeing him again, allows him to pretend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you my lovely jujubean <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, if anyone is still lost on the crossover front - this is exposition day. I hope it's still enjoyable for all!

Arthur never imagined that the things he saw were real and not just the products of his brain broadcasting its brokenness to his eyes. He never imagined that the life he knew would fall away, collapsing like a sandcastle starting with his mother illness and her slow slow slow fade to black and ending in this underworld full of nightmares so real that you could fight them.

Most other recruits at the Academy are Nephilm, decedents of a man who asked an angel to mix his holy blood with that of humans to create a race of warriors to fight the demon scourge. The Angel, people correct, with annoyance in their eyes and capital letters in their tone. Privately, Arthur has his theories about aliens and genetic experimentation with a religious cover story but he keeps this close to his chest. A few other recruits are like him, gifted in some diluted way and likely the long-lost decedents of Nephilm who turned away from their own to marry regular old humans. There seem to be all sorts of conservative rules about whom Nephilm may and may not marry; if Arthur finds it a little odd that a bunch of fifteen-year-olds are concerned about who they’ll marry well, he keeps that to himself as well.

Recruits who were born Nephilm seem to think very much of themselves, but Arthur has never concerned himself with people who thought they were better than him in some way. If he did, then nothing would ever get done. Arthur focuses on his instructors and not on his peers; he takes notes. He takes detailed notes on the legend of The Angel and the classifications of demons and the many many conclaves in which the many many laws were written. _The Law is hard, but it is the Law_. He scribbles on every page, because it sounds important. The Law says that Nephilm are sworn to protect all of the souled inhabitants of the world, Mundane and Downworlder alike. The truth seems to be that most Nephilm are of the opinion that Downworlders, all of the creatures that Arthur can possibly think of from werewolves to vampires to warlocks and fairies, don’t truly have souls worth saving and are not worthy of protection. Somehow, Arthur thinks, he’s found himself in the company of self-righteous dogmatists who are effectively endowed with the responsibility of keeping the world safe.   _Same shit,_ he thinks, _different weapons._

“Why not guns?”

His instructor sighs and steps away from the rack of blades and various other ancient weapons he’d been offering Arthur.

“Mundanes and their guns,” he huffs.

“I was told that the Nephilm are in the business of war,” Arthur says slowly, “the business of war has been the business of guns for a couple of centuries now.”

Somewhere in the corner of the training room, a man whose clothes are too loud and whose eyes are too bright hardly stifles a chuckle.

“Guns will do little against a demon,” his instructor says in a most patronizing tone, “the only thing that kills a demon is Adamas, of which the Iron Sisters craft our blades, our arrows, and our various other weapons.”

Arthur considered this, staring the man in the eye in a way other adults had described as unnerving, “And has it never occurred to the Iron Sisters to craft an assault rifle?”

This time the guy in the corner outright snorts, gaining him a glare from Arthur’s instructor that didn’t seem to faze him at all.

“Mind your insolence, boy. It has occurred to many a better and smarter man than you,” the haughty instructor declared, “it is simply not possible.”

 “Well alright then,” Arthur says, taking a sword. Far be it from him to argue with a half-Angel demon fighter who says something is impossible.

 Arthur practiced every moment he had with every weapon he could. Plenty of hours in the day were set apart for sparing and instruction, many more than were set apart for sitting in front of instructors and guest lecturers to learn more about the shadow world. Even so, Arthur found himself slipping out of the dusty classrooms with the sleepy tutors reading from the ancient books and going to the training rooms to practice. He could read the Laws and the Nephilm histories himself, he knew, and it was as good a time as any to take advantage of how little anyone noticed he was there.

“You’re holding it all wrong,” a soft laughing voice said, accented tilted in some European way. Arthur looked over his shoulder, the one not balancing the lance, and saw Mallorie “Call me Mal” standing there. If they were in a normal school in the normal world, Mal would be a cheerleader and class president and leader of the save the puppies and kittens brigade. Mal was the kind of girl who held court whenever she told a story and made a chorus of heartbroken sighs whenever she walked away. Arthur knew that if he were … if things were simpler, he would be madly infatuated with her. As it was, he could only admire the way others admired her and envy the ease with which she did everything.

“One figures that might happen when we haven’t had this lesson yet,” Arthur says, “that’s kind of why I was embarrassing myself in private.”

“Ah,” she says, unapologetic as she grabs a lance for herself, “you want to impress, yes? Get ahead of the game.”

“I want to do things properly,” he says, turning his eyes back to the target, “and thoroughly.”

“Funny,” she says, like she actually means it, “I thought Americans were very into…working smarter not harder?”

“That’s why I’m not sitting in Redburrows class listening to him fumble around how much he hates Downworlders without outright telling us to kill them.”

“We have very stringent laws telling us not to kill them,” Mal says seriously.

“And you have very old prejudices encouraging you that their deaths at your hands are always an accident,” he says, throwing the lance and missing spectacularly.

“You’ve caught on to our dark secrets very quickly, Arthur,” she says. It startles him in the most pleasant way that she seems to know his name. She takes up a lance from beside his feet, positions herself in a wide stance and throws the lance to a dead center on the target.

“So you mustn’t waste your time on silly things like lances. You’re too clever for that. When you ascend,” she says as if surviving the process that would make him a Nephilm was a matter of fact, “you will be assigned to an institute and will have to patrol the streets nightly, efficiently, sleekly. You will not be sent to the 18th century when we battled demons in wide open fields from stupidly obvious assaults. You will need knives, short blades, slim swords – bows and arrows if you have better aim with more control. Not a mace or a lance or a catapult.”

She heads over to the weapons wrack and takes two blades, practice swords not made of Adamas or etched in runes – safe for practice with recruits who had not yet been granted the gifts of the Angel to handle the real angelic blades.

“And you must learn how to spar,” she continues, “for demons are sometimes stupid pests but are more and more often clever parasites – they take humanoid forms and taunt and scramble and you will have to spar them nearly hand to hand.”

Arthur would love to say that he had never wished he were different, that he had never wanted to like girls the way other boys liked girls. He had, of course he had, in the same way he had wished not to see things that weren’t there. But he had never, as much as he did right now, wished that he had a simple word for what he felt towards Mal just then. A crush would be so easy to explain, puppy love or lust. But Arthur knew that was less than that and that it was more than that, all at once. As they sparred, as Mal thoroughly kicked his ass and laughed and danced around him with her blade, he wished that he could say he was falling in love with her. At least something simple like that would have made sense. When he finally caught up and managed to get the upper hand, Mal laughed. She laughed in the sweetest most honest way that Arthur had ever heard, as if his success brought her joy of the purest form.

There’s a wolf whistle from the corner of the training room. Wolf whistling is not a common occurrence in this place. They both look up from the tired pile of blades and sweat that they both were to see the incongruous man from before. His eyes are still too bright and his clothes are still ridiculously loud and the strange combination of adrenaline and hot older guy is about to embarrass him.

“Mr. Eames!” Mal shrieks, shooting up and into the guy’s arms before Arthur can even blink.

“Hello you lovely thing, imagine my surprise when I arrived in Paris to thoroughly swindle your uncle and found that they’d sent you away.”

“They were tired of … what did they say? My flights of fancy and recklessness. But enough about them,” she said, pulling the man to the puddle of tired limbs that was still Arthur, strewn on the floor.

“And who would this be,” the man says, in a softly amused way that speaks of knowing Mal all too well.

“This is Arthur,” she says proudly, like a child at show and tell, “when he graduates he will Ascend.”

“A pleasure,” the bright, loud, beautiful, amused man says, “I am Eames. Wanderlust stricken warlock, at your service.”


	4. Chapter 4

The Academy has all the appearance of a drafty old castle, but in the dead of summer, darkness falls in a hot humid blanket which makes the cool stone floors appealing to a sleepless pair on the edge of something new.

“Have you chosen a name?” Mal wonders idly, “for when you Ascend?”

Mal always speaks of it in these uncertain terms. Now as the day of his Ascension looms he takes some comfort in her confidence.

“Yes,” he says quietly, “Morningwright.”

“Arthur Morningwright,” she says gently, as if savoring it. “I like it. Why have you chosen it?”

“Alice Morningwright,” he whispers back, “the last of her name, died in 1903. It was my mother’s name, Alice. I thought-”

“I think it’s perfect,” Mal cuts in, once his voice titters close to breaking. They lay beside one another, just a breath away, in perfect idle silence that after a time Arthur breaks.

“Mal?” he whispers.

She’s beside him humming a song he’s never heard, “Yes, Arthur?”

“I’m sorry,” he says softly.

“What for?”

Arthur hesitates, finding his apology silly at this point, “When we first met I had…bad thoughts about you.”

Her hushed giggle makes his heart feel tight.

“Impure thoughts?”

Under the cover of night Arthur flushes, “I…no. I mean. You’re gorgeous, you know, that but I …”

“Arthur,” she says, suddenly sober, “It’s alright. I … I guessed.”

He sighs, resigned, “I’m obvious, aren’t I?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she declares, rolling onto her stomach.

“It does,” he says as he raises an eyebrow she cannot see.

“Well it shouldn’t,” she says, as if that were all there were to it, “Now tell me about these bad thoughts you’ve been having about me.”

“I just thought that you’d be… you know, awful,” he says apologetically, “I guess it’s hard to believe someone can be as skilled, beautiful, and popular as you and still be so…”

“Oh, please don’t stop,” she giggles, “do you mean so tolerant?”

“Kind,” he says fondly.

“I must not be doing as good a job as I should in our sparring if you think me so kind,” she says with a soft snort.

“You spar with me at all,” he points out, thinking of all the other elite students who refuse him, “don’t you think that’s kind?”

“I think it’s genius,” she says, the wicked sparkle in her eye visible in the dark, “when you come to be the strongest and quickest of us all, the pride of our people, I will know all your weakness. You know, what with our sparring.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and mulls over his next words for a moment, “I never thought that you would be friends with a Warlock.”

“Ah,” she says, with a satisfied brightness in her voice, “I thought I saw your eyes light up when he came to lecture last month. Tell me do you always write the instructor’s name quite so many times in your notes?”

“I’d…never met a Warlock before, that’s all,” he mutters, though he knows in his heart that it’s unnecessary.

“ _That’s all_ he says,” she laughs, loud enough to make Arthur worry, “please – nothing is ever all with Mr. Eames.”

Arthur groans, “You’ll tease me forever.”

“For all my days,” she agrees, “but you can’t be blamed, he is a striking figure.”

“How is it you know him?” he can’t help but ask, “I thought that you family was very …”

“Bigoted? They are. Boring stuffy old bags. But every Shadowhunter needs the services of a Warlock sooner than later. Mr. Eames is who my family has called upon for decades. My affection towards him is no doubt part of the reason I’m here.”

Arthur frowns. He’s only caught bits and pieces of knowledge of the Bellefleurs. They are not an ancient family by any means, but all the more set in the ways of the Clave for it. Always trying to prove that they are more Nephilm than anyone else, or so the rumors say.

“What do they think the academy will do for you?”

“At the very least direct my ‘overwhelming energies’ towards our born cause,” she says, sounding bored, “Though I know for certain _mon oncle_ hopes I will find an Old Name around here and graduate engaged.”

Arthur can’t hold back his shock, “They want you to marry? Mal you’re even younger than I am.”

“Seventeen next Spring,” she hums.

“You can’t possibly be considering marriage,” he huffs.

“From amongst this lot? Never,” she laughs softly, “besides I have my heart set on a higher prize than a husband.”

“And what is that?”

“A parabatai,” she whispers the word sounding sacred from her lips.

“I’ve read all about parabatai. It sounds…” Arthur hesitates, tasting words on his tongue; _incredible, perfect, family_ , “intense.”

Something about her voice makes Arthur worry he’s said something wrong, “Do you think so?”

“I guess it’s…difficult to understand,” he says, “it sounds so much like a marriage.”

“It does,” she agrees.

“But parabatai aren’t allowed to be…together in that way.”

“No,” she says softly, “they are not.”

Arthur feels as if Mal is hinting…but he can’t allow himself to hope that someone would want to tie themselves to him that way. Arthur has never been one to inspire ties in people. After all, he couldn’t so much as inspire his family to love him after his mother was gone.

“Why do people do it?”

“To be perfect together,” she says in a fervent hush, “perfect in battle and perfect in life. In romance, there is always jealousy and desire getting in the way of perfectly loving one another. Parabatai they are always…how do you say? On the same page. Always to the common goal, to protect the other and be stronger in battle, and to never be alone.”

“Mal,” he says, not used to or comfortable beating around the bush, “if your family wants you to marry an old name, then they most certainly want you to choose a parabatai among those people as well.”

“Arthur,” she says, sounding both amused and serious in the way only she can, “my family has no say in who I choose as a parabatai, it is a bond most sacred and politics cannot intervene.”

“Mal,” he says, half pleading now, “you can’t be serious.”

“I am,” she says, “but I would never – I don’t want to just get my way. I know that I often do, but this…this must be mutual in every way.”

“Mal,” he says now soft and full of yearning, “you don’t even know if I’ll live. I can train and read and train for another month or another year, but it still might all end in putting the cup to my lips tomorrow and dying on the spot. Rejected by the Angel’s power. Don’t you at least want to wait to see if I’m even worth asking?”

“Arthur,” she says, sounding terribly affectionate and fond, “right now you’re lying beside me – inches apart. You are laying here listening to me prattle about my family, gossiping about the Warlock you think is positively dreamy, and wanting to be nowhere else.”

“Where else would I want to be?”

“Exactly,” she says as she sits up and moves to lean over him, her hand splayed beside his head and her hair cascading, brushing at his cheek.

“Arthur,” she says very seriously, “you believe with all your heart, that tomorrow might be your last day on Earth. That after all your hopes and all of your work, you will sip from the Mortal Cup and found wanting. To you, the thought that your death is near is very clear and to some degree certain. And you find yourself wanting to be nowhere else than being at my side. I could think of no one else, no ever – even if tomorrow the Angel takes you from me. I will never take a parabatai who isn’t you.”

“I would never want a parabatai who isn’t you,” he echoes, his throat tight with tears. Then Mal smiles, bright like the morning sun.

“Then it is settled. Tomorrow you will Ascend, take your place among the Nephilm, and then we will swear ourselves to one another.”

“Yes,” he says, and he cannot help but believe her. He cannot help but trust that he will Ascend and never leave Mal’s side ever again.  


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enough backstory! Back to our regularly scheduled present day angst!

Eames struggled with the choice at hand. He could do nothing, wait for the boy to take his troubles to some other warlock’s door – someone who would overcharge him and sell them out to the Clave between breaths. Or he could do the inadvisable for the lovely broken creature resting in a dreamless sleep on his fluffiest couch. Arthur had gone into a frenzy from distress to anger, making to for the first demonic artifacts he could see in Eames’ flat. He’d had to cast a calming charm on the boy that had rendered him unconscious.

His mind made up by the careful rise and fall of Arthur’s shoulders and the soft part of his lips and the addictive beauty of his peace, Eames sets out into the depths of the city to the grand cathedral-like building that not everyone can see.

Even when she’s made up of shadows and stray rays of streetlight, Mal still cuts a contour Eames wants to stop and commit to art. She is dark and beautiful in the night time, holding her coat too tight and standing rigid in nerves, as she is beautiful in bright mornings swirling long skirts over cobbled streets. She’s looking for something – no – she’s looking for someone in the night, and it isn’t him. But when her eyes make out the shape of him, no doubt distinct to her who has seen him at her doorstep all her life, there is relief. She was looking for Arthur and now she knows where he is.

“Is he…,” she starts as soon as he is near enough to hear. Then she shakes her head, curls brushing against her cheeks, “Never mind – I know he isn’t alright.”

He crosses his arms like the disapproving father he will never be.

“You expect him to be?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve come all this way to judge me the way my family would,” she scoffs, her eyes suddenly hard and threatening.

“The way they would if they knew you’d already made up your mind to turn your back on your Angelic duties and run off with a mere mortal? No. I couldn’t care less,” he says with a shrug, “what I do care about is that boy I had to sedate a moment ago, I know you care about him too.”

“Eames,” she urges, begs, demands, “help us.”

“Isn’t that what you sent Arthur to ask me for?”

“I didn’t send Arthur anywhere, he isn’t a pet or a servant. He is my parabatai, the stuff of my soul. I would kill and die for him,” she swears, with the same fervor that Arthur had sworn her people – false aristocrats or common men as they might be – would be his people.

She lets go of the clutch she held on her coat and he can see that she’s still in worn and dirty gear. Eames pieces together the day he did not witness, Mal telling Arthur perhaps during their training, that she’d gone and fallen in love with someone she shouldn’t have. Parting ways, perhaps as she went off to see the lover in question, while Arthur donned clothes he’d never be caught dead in and snuck off to find him. Mal returning to find Arthur gone and making his excuses to her family while she went to fight demons in dark alleys.

“You won’t turn away from love for him,” he reminds her. In case she’s made up her mind that this is anything but her wishes tearing them apart.

“Arthur would never ask me to choose,” she says, looking away from him.

“No,” Eames agrees, “and you obviously would.”

“I would never-”

“You are asking him to choose between the life he worked for and the life you want,” he points out, “between the vow he made to your Angel and the one he made to you, between a chance at normalcy and a life on the run.”

“He doesn’t have to come – it would tear me in two but…” she bites her lip, distressed at the very thought. It strikes Eames then how very young she is, how young they both are – too young for so large a burden.

“It would break you both to be sure,” he says, as gently as he can, “but you’d have someone to love and be loved by. At least I assume this apple of discord loves you back?”

Mal’s eyes flicker with unbridled love and she nods.

“And what would Arthur have? The loving bosom of the family that sent away their own blood when she got a bit rebellious? Or the pitying glances of everyone around him while they whisper of how weak a bond he must have made that you could turn your back and walk away?”

“Stop it,” she gasps out, as if he’s stabbed her through the chest.

“No,” he says firmly, “you stop. Stop pretending you’re being anything less than selfish. I don’t blame you for it, sweetheart, your lot are not on this Earth long enough to be begrudged the chance to be selfish and to love someone recklessly. But admit it. It’ll be your happiness and his misery, dragged along wherever you and your lover go – untethered from the world he chose and thrown back into the one he tried to leave behind.”

“I would give this up,” she says softly, “if Arthur asked. He only has to ask and I’ll tell Dom that we can’t be together.”

“But you know he won’t,” Eames says, “so I will. Don’t do this to him – in the end it’ll break your heart as much as his.”

“All he has to do is ask,” she says again, before she pulls her coat tightly about her once again and looks down at the leaves which rustle past her feet.

Eames takes a deep loud breath and walks away from her, back towards his flat without the help of a portal. He shouldn’t be involving himself in any of this he knows, he should learn from all the tales of heartache that he’s heard before. Warlocks entwining themselves in the affairs of Angels take away nothing but cracks in their immortal hearts and stories of sorrow to be shared over centuries.


	6. Chapter 6

Mal sheds the Bellefleur name like a chiffon scarf on a windy spring day in California. Dominick Cobb is a besotted young man, who would have made a terrible Shadowhunter because he cannot see the world beyond the woman he’s fallen in love with. He and Arthur have their priorities in common that way, save for the fact that Arthur could have been the best of them. He could have torn down their ancient columns and restored the Nephilm to righteousness. But that is all in the past, buried in their skin as they stand together in the little courtroom in Pasadena of all places. It looks a little odd, Mal and her best man – her brother, she will tell everyone for the rest of their days – standing almost as one while Mal and Dom swear upon one another. Eames thinks they’ll make a curious set, for Dom seems to comprehend within the reason of Mundanes that he is marrying someone who already has a soulmate. Perhaps they’ll make a nice little arrangement of it, and that would be better. He can admit to himself that he has spent far too long thinking about what this brave new world will offer Arthur. Will he be part of a loving triad or hang on pathetically until he is brushed aside by the passion of two? Eames cannot tell, and it has been keeping him awake.

Mal looks like a Hollywood starlet in her fluttering gold dress, and while the matching accents in Dom’s suit are much subtler they are still there. He can only assume how much Dom knows about _them_ , about _their_ ways.

“Congratulations dove,” he says as he kisses the air half a centimeter from her cheek. She looks at him with those eyes that contain libraries and it settles in his gut, a little grief. Mortals are ephemeral things that Eames never got the hang of disengaging from. He has known Mal from an infant and she has crawled into his heart like so many others. It has never been the same with them after that day when the choices were made: her choice to follow her heart’s desire and his irrational inconceivable choice to protect Arthur from his love for her.

Mal, for her part, has succeeded in getting her cake and eating it too – while Eames has done nothing more than exactly what Arthur has asked of him. None of those requests have accomplished his goal of protecting him.

“Paris for the honeymoon, do you think?”

Arthur levels him a glare, the first of the night, “You don’t have to be an ass about it.”

“Don’t I? I feel like the job has fallen to me, pet. Will they bring you along? Pop a sleeper beside their marriage bed?”

“I regret few things more than inviting you to this wedding,” Arthur says, practically clicking his heels as he strides away from him to make nice with Dominick’s family, settle his nice story about growing up in a New York boarding school to excuse his lack of accent, tell them how happy he is for his beloved sister. So, wounding him doesn’t help the situation, Eames will have to think of something else.

He gives him his space, something he is perfectly capable of doing despite Arthur’s incredulity. He even waits for the man to approach him at the reception where he’s nursing his third fizzy pink cocktail.

“I’m not going to live with them,” he says like he’s been chewing on those words since he walked away five hours since.

“And how will it work, Arthur Bishop Morningwright Cobb?”

“Stay in the city. Find a job,” he shrugs, “I’ll make it work.”

Eames turns on him then, losing patience, “How aren’t you angry? You worked and bled for a life outside of the mundane, for a place in the world. And you’re giving it all up so she can play Romeo and Juliet.”

Arthur looks so terribly young when he sets one foot forward and crowds in, “You would love it if I were seething in jealousy, wouldn’t you?”

“I just can’t fathom how you aren’t,” he says. Maybe the honesty of his tone shakes Arthur out of his anger, but he leans on the bar next to Eames and takes the drink right from his hand.

“She’s made of joy now,” he says as he watches the newlyweds dance and laugh and fall over themselves, “which means I get to experience that feeling for once.”

His hand falls over the place in his side where the rune that unites them lays hidden. The enchantment that Eames has fabricated for them obscures their marks for the prying eyes of anyone who might care to check, but he doesn’t doubt they know exactly where each rune lays.

“Stay with me,” he says, not out of nowhere but rather because maybe then this insane urge will let him sleep.

“I don’t need your charity,” Arthur scoffs as he takes another sip of Eames’s drink.

He pries the glass out of Arthur’s hand, momentarily concerned that it will snap in it. There is so much more in those words and Eames is too old not to hear it – the uncertainty and the fear, the hope and the relief in it.

“Let’s call it payment then, for the enchantment,” he says, which startles Arthur into squinting up at him, “nothing nefarious darling. Think me a lonely old man who wants a little company. While you find your place again.”

There is a boy in Arthur’s eyes who wants to say yes, curl up inside of Eames and ask for sanctuary. Someone beat that boy to death with cold shoulders and caring just a little less than necessary. Just enough to call it an effort and not enough to keep the flame of him awake. So the callouses and the bruises answer him instead.

“I’ll find my place just fine thanks,” he grits out, pushing away from the bar – away from Eames again. He reaches into the starched collar of his shirt and pulls out a gold necklace. It’s crude and unrefined and it has a badly carved saint on pendant that is so blurred Eames won’t even try to guess.

“It’s not worth shit in cash but it’ll do nicely for a spell,” he says as business like as Eames has ever heard, “it’s all I have left of her.”

Heirloom magic, the power of the last earthly possession of someone dead and missed with rawness. Seen that way the trinket is worth ten enchantments of the like he's performed for them.

He drops the piece in Eames’s hand, which he only just manages to catch as Arthur resolutely storms away. Eames watches him as he melts into the crowd before turning his eyes to the dancing couples again. Mal’s smile is blinding, but Eames can see it, the hit her joy has taken in the wake of Arthur’s misery. Something ugly in Eames rejoices that she is not unaffected, but it does little else.

When he catches sight of Arthur this time he lets him be, watches from a respectful distance as the man jots away plans and thoughts and hopes into a little moleskin with a broken pen. Eames remembers the name of the feeling that is blooming like a wound on his chest – it’s heartbreak, of the type you can only feel for someone else. He looks out at the precious little medallion in his hand and wraps it around his fingers like a rosary instead. He’ll keep it safe. Maybe Arthur will live long enough to stop chopping bits of his soul away, maybe he’ll want something for himself someday.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Eames wasn’t surprised when Arthur – just Arthur now – showed up at his door, wearing Armani like battle gear with a Glock in one holster and his Steele in another. He wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d taken a job in something dreadfully corporate alongside Dominick and that Mal was expecting her first child. None of that surprised him one bit. What he did find rather startling was the way he had undone his tie like it strangled him and the uncertain near aborted step he took toward Eames.

“Arthur?”

“I need – I want…”

Eames might have delighted in the frustration of Arthur’s desires, if he weren’t so intimately acquainted with how little Arthur ever got in the way of what he wanted. So, Eames made things easy for him.

“This?” he asks, he hopes gently, as he moves in to Arthur’s space cautiously asking for leave with each motion.

“I don’t I… yes,” he concedes, reaching out and laying his hand directly at the center of Eames’ chest, “this.”

A part of his gut takes exception to the way Arthur says it, that he wants _this_ in a vague and frazzled manner. He doesn’t come to Eames saying _I want you_ , but instead pleading for something, anything, to be even slightly his. Eames, having found himself quite unintentionally Arthur’s for an embarrassing number of years now, doesn’t begrudge him this slight at all.

He takes the hand on his chest in his and brings the deceptively steady fingers to his lips, while his other hand works down the buttons of his own shirt. He’ll give Arthur what he wants, and he won’t make him beg for it either, but there is something to be said for letting Arthur figure out what it all means.

Arthur’s hand lands back on his chest, the exact same place without the obstruction of some less than extravagant silk, and it brands him just as Eames knew that it would. He can feel it now, like and itch before the heat of a burn settles under the skin. This will break him, into tiny little pieces that will never be found again. It will be okay in the end, he tells himself. He’ll pour gold over the cracks and carry on with himself. He’ll fall on the sword of Arthur’s loneliness, that heartbreak that Eames took for himself with eyes open. It’s selfish really. The lives of the Angel blooded are so brief, briefer yet than a Mundanes, to take even a slice of it for himself well – what’s all this life for if he doesn’t make it worth it.

In his dreams he takes Arthur apart piece by piece and then puts him together again. The reality of it all is that Arthur is already in pieces, he keeps giving them away like they aren’t his at all. So, Eames resolves not to save or reconstruct the man in front of him, but simply to give him what they both want. He unbuttons each of Arthur’s carefully tailored buttons, undoing the armor that he’s outfitted himself with. He does away with the dark jacket and the crisp shirt, makes swift work of the leather belt and the metallic clasp of his trousers before he stops. Running his hands over the expanse of bare skin, Eames lets his fingertips wander down Arthur’s left arm to the thin strength of his wrist where the amulet hiding his runes always is. Eames gave it to him, he feels no compunction in taking it away.

He looks Arthur in the eye while he unclasps it, holding his gaze even as he can feel the charm fizzling away from his body until all of the dark marks on his skin are revealed. He earned this, the right to wear the Angel’s runes, and no twisted Law is going to take them away if Eames has anything to say.

“Eames,” Arthur breathes out. For a moment he thinks the man is finally coming to his senses, that he will button himself up and call it a mistake and make a clean break of it. But Arthur’s eyes are caught just below Eames’s neck, where a multitude of pendants with various degrees of power always hang. If Eames blushes it can’t be helped, he never did intend for Arthur to see it.

“My mother’s necklace,” he whispers.

“You did give it to me,” Eames answers in an equal hush.

“For spellwork,” Arthur mumbles, eyes still on it, “thought you’d make a ward out of it, sell it.”

“But darling,” he says, reaching out to cup Arthur’s cheek and lift his gaze up, “ _you_ gave it to me. What price could I put on it?”

Arthur’s kiss is like the greedy gulp of air a drowning man takes and Eames he gets to feel like oxygen.

Arthur’s skin is over-warm under his hands when he traces them around his waist, pulling him in, guiding him backwards into his room.

Arthur’s hands are frantic, peeling off the rest of the shirt that he probably thinks is gaudy and tugging at his trousers like they’re enemies.

“Eames,” he says and pleads and whines, but his fingers are decisive as they grab hold of Eames’s ass and tug him closer.

Losing his patience, Eames waves his hand in a motion that is almost lazy, gold sparks forgotten as the remnants of clothes that disappear. Arthur makes a half-choked noise that could be a laugh, the sensation of magic still novel and unexpected to him.

He wants to give Arthur what he wants. But this, they both need this. Arthur lands on his back with a surprised blink, watching Eames with a sudden suspiciousness until he makes his intentions clear. He chooses the rune on Arthur’s left shoulder first – stamina if he remembers correctly- tracing its contours with a single curious finger before following the shape with his tongue.

Below him Arthur’s body tenses and loosens like he can’t make up his mind, but his hands still grab and pull at Eames like they’ve made a choice and won’t take it back. By the time his tongue traces the rune over his right hip Arthur is mewling and clawing at the sheets beneath them.

“Tell me what you want, darling,” he says, nose pressing into the crevice of his thigh, “tell me and it’s yours.”

Perhaps it’s the first time Arthur believes it, perhaps it’s the first time he’s been told such a thing in any way that was sincere, but the sound that breaks out of Arthur’s chest is half sob and half victory. The word that comes out of his lips sets Eames’s heart on the precipice, ready and waiting in vertigo.

“You,” he breathes out, “you Eames, I want you.”

“Yours love,” he swears, pulling himself up to speak it into Arthur’s lips before reason and the world catches up with them, “been yours all this time.”

Eames is a liar, it’s how he stays alive. But the truth of the words tastes sharp and metallic like blood on his tongue when he says them. He has always been Arthur’s. He had been captivated since that day at the academy when he saw the promise in him, when he had seen him in battle he had been awestruck, and his heart had begun breaking the moment Arthur stepped soaked and terrified onto his carpet and begged for help – he had always always been Arthur, had been waiting his whole ridiculously long life to be his.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is very very very appreciated, tell me if you like it or where i'm losing you if you don't and any Mortal Instruments/Shadowhunters lore you'd like to see folded in!

When he wakes, it is to the odd coolness that sweeps over him as Arthur unconsciously peels away from their shared skin, leaving the remnants of cooling sweat to wake Eames with their foreignness. Asleep with his legs spread and his ass still blushed, lips bruised with kisses – Arthur looks neither debouched nor Angelic, but human in the simplest most ridiculous ways. His lips are parted, little shines of drool apparent as his breath rustles the un-gelled bits of hair upon his face.

Arthur asleep is a masterpiece of contradiction, unbearably young and unfathomably weary. He was probably born with bloody knuckles and a busted lip but there he lays, body unblemished and vulnerable and calling for Eames to cover him.

And the thing is Arthur probably deserves the kind of devotions the Song of Songs talks about, but instead he’s got Mal and himself, a couple of selfish reprobates who love him too much not to claim him but not quite enough to send him away.

Eames leans down from his kneeled perch, done with the creepily staring at his lover sleep part of the morning, but only because he can see the edges of wakefulness in his little jolts.

“Morning, pet,” he mutters, reaching over Arthur’s quickly tensing form for a pack of beat up cigarettes.

“Eames?”

He runs over the scenarios. He could light his cig and play it off like another Tuesday. He could curl around Arthur like a second skin and swear the rest of his eternity to him. Give or take. So, he slips and unlit one between his lips and offers the pack to Arthur while he digs his fingers into the boy’s hair. _This is having_ , he wants to convey, _this is all it needs to be_.

Arthur paws away at the back and yanks the one from Eames’s lips before he throws the full weight of his eyes at him. He’s clinging to Eames’s neck and shoulders like the current is about to take him, so Eames gives in. He curls around him like a second skin but otherwise keeps his peace.

“Mal,” he whispers after he’s ghosted their lips in a brushing tease, “I need to tell her –“

“She knows where you are, luv, I sent a text,” he says as he fishes the cigarette from between the sheets and searches the bedside for a lighter, “She said not to send you home till I’d fucked the corporate stench off you.”

“She said no such thing,” Arthur mumbles, but he relaxes back into the bed.

“She did so,” he counters just for the pleasure of it. He takes a drag before he goes on, “She also said she’ll name the lil’ one after me and I can be the fairy godfather.”

“You’ll be that child’s godfather over my dead body,” Arthur growls, still sleepy and relentlessly burrowing into Eames’s side.

“Love,” Eames says.

All of the tension returns to Arthur’s back and then he’s all there, sitting almost ramrod straight at Eames’s side.

“I wanted you,” he says, all too seriously, “and I’ve known for a while that you wanted me back. I just figured I… it doesn’t need to happen again.”

“It didn’t need to happen at all,” Eames shrugs before catching at Arthur’s chin and turning him almost forcibly to face him, “but things catch fire one way or another, darling and it’s better to get nice and toasty than stand on the wet road and watch it jealously. If that’s all you wanted then it’s all it is, but I meant every fucking word and you know it.”

Arthur should be breathless or angry or wanting but instead he is a stone and a steel plating, staring back at Eames like a mirror – no emotion but his own. He’s contemplating, Eames knows this, and contains the desire to shake him out of the marble-like trance.

“I want my mother’s necklace back,” he says, which of course breaks Eames’s too eager heart. He reaches toward the back of his neck and unclasps the thing immediately, dangling it before Arthur without question. He takes it and in a synchronized motion grasps hold of Eames’s other hand, nearly throwing him off balance. Taking the necklace between his fingertips he brings it to his lips and murmurs too softly for the words to reach back to Eames. When he’s through he presses a kiss to the pendant and places the chain gently, intentionally, once more around Eames’s neck. Eames says nothing, but his eyes must demand an explanation.

Arthur takes the nearly forgotten cigarette from Eames’s hand and takes a drag, making no move to give it back. Then his face breaks into a smile the likes of which Eames has never had the good fortune to see and he reaches forward to clasp the necklace back around Eames’s neck. He lingers, lips moving over Eames’s ear just as they had over the pendant, “Now it isn’t a payment for an associate Mr. Eames, it is a gift. For my…my…mine.”

Eames, hand falling over the warmed precious metal resting on his skin, doesn’t say anything else. He keeps Arthur in his bed from 9 to 5 and a couple of hours after that, feeding him magically summoned fruit and mundanely ordered Chinese.  He runs his fingers through the other man’s hair like it’s a right of his and runs his tongue over Arthur’s runes and Arthur’s other precious places until he’s memorized every taste of him.

Like a rewinding image he finds himself in his living room with Arthur clasping on Armani trousers and looking like a mirage of pretentious militancy and delicate Angelic grace. He places a kiss to the quiet curve of Arthur’s neck as he places the thick golden amulet around his wrist, making all traces of Arthur’s hard-earned gifts hide away. He will keep the truth of Arthur’s multitude safe. He will be the guardian of his undignified pretzeling sleep, the last token of the women that gave birth to him, and a constellation of uncatalogued smiles that will only ever be his.


	9. Chapter 9

The comical distress on Dom’s face as Arthur kicks a chair to within an inch of its existence is almost worth the destruction.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Sympathy pains,” Eames hums, pushing sweaty strands of hair from Mal’s face while trying not to get distracted by the contortions of pain on Arthur’s face, “A little something for the sting luv?”

Mal has a death grip on his arm and has probably already broken some of Dominick’s bones. Her voice is strangled and raspy when it comes, “Oui mon filou pour l'amour de l'ange.”

 “She’s already been dosed –“

“Cobb,” Eames grits out, “far be it from me to disparage the advances that your people have made without an ounce of magic, but Mal has been cured by Warlocks and Silent Brothers since she was born and this shite doesn’t do it for her.”

“Mal I really don’t think-“

“Je m’en fous!”

“Let him help her,” Arthur growls, “the nurse will be back any moment and he won’t be able to then.”

“There,” he whispers as he puts as much energy as he can into soothing her pain without putting the whole enterprise in danger, “that’s about as much as I can do, dove.”

“Thank you,” she says, half a smile gracing her face, “that’s better. Thank you.”

It’s not long before she’s squeezing her eyes shut in pain once again, “ _Fucking Adam_.”

“Fuck him and the mud he came from,” Arthur echos in a gasp.

Eames takes pity on Dom’s growing confusion and pats the man on the shoulder, “The Nephilm hold Adam solely responsible for Original Sin, which interacts rather badly with the Angel’s blood – it makes childbirth particularly nightmarish for them.”

“And Arthur is about to break that tray table because…”

“Parabatai feel the edges of each other’s pain, yes,” Eames sighs, “mixed gender pairs are uncommon for many reasons, but this is certainly one.”

Another bloodcurdling scream from Mal stops all conversation and a startled nurse runs in just in time to see Arthur punch through a wall.

“Alright, all of you out! Right now! We’re going to get this baby out without all of this testosterone flying around the room,” she hisses at them, “out!”

Unable to treat the source of the pain, Eames wraps his arms around Arthur’s quaking body while Dom paces a trench into the hospital floor.

“We should have taken her home,” Arthur whimpers, “the Silent Brothers – she’ll be so vulnerable, they both will.”

Eames knows that it’s true, the energy that exudes from the birth of a new Nephilim is like a live bait for anything remotely demonic in a ten mile radius.

“Shhh,” he tries, “it’s alright, darling. We’re going to protect them.”

A gasp like the breath is punched out of him escapes Arthur and Dominck is suddenly there at their side.

“Is she okay?”’

“Does he look okay?”

Eames is very nearly certain that Arthur will faint or break his arm, whichever comes first, and he does nearly lose three fingers before Arthur goes limp in his arms.

“She’s okay,” he finally whispers, “she’s okay.”

It takes a full three minutes for the nurses to come out of the room and confirm that, inviting them all – confused as they are about the paternity of the child – to come very quietly into the room.

Eames hasn’t been present at many births, in fact this would only be his second and the only one he’s ever been intentionally called to attend. He feels as if he should be standing on some ceremony, but only manages to stand awkwardly in a corner of the room as Arthur and Dominick tend to the mother and child like a well-oiled machine. In so many ways it is such a pity that Arthur could never be folded into their love, but Eames thanks God for it every day.

“Mon filou, have you ever held something so small?” Mal asks with a girlish but tired smile.

“I really don’t think I –“

“Come,” she says before he can finish the though, “show her a bit of wonder.”

Eames walks up slowly, uncertain that anyone has ever handed him a non-Warlock child in his life.

“You’ve got her,” she whispers as Dom transfers his first born into Eames’s arms without a hint of protest, “see you’re a natural.”

Eames swallows tightly, holding the little tiny wrinkled horrid beautiful thing in his arms.

“Hello luv,” he whispers waving a gentle charm of peace over her in sparks her closed eyes will not mind, “welcome to the ride.”

Arthur is at his shoulder, Eames places the tiny bundle in his arms.

“What will be her name?”

“Philippa,” Dom answers, his eyes captivated by the sight of Mal all tired and content and inexplicably stunning, “Phillipa Alice Cobb.”

Eames thinks the reason Arthur holds the baby tighter to his chest is the sheer fear that he might drop her from shock. The manipulative little – of course she would pull such a stunt. As if Arthur hadn’t already, as if anything would be necessary to tie his devotion to the child of his parabatai. Now she goes and does this.

Arthur’s smile is watery, matching the tired half-asleep smile from the woman on the bed.

“Always thought it was a beautiful name,” she says in a hum, “I didn’t want it lost.”

There is a sound of tutting from the door and they all turn to find a furious nurse, “This is much too much of a fuss.”

“I’ve got her,” Dom whispers, taking the baby from Arthur’s still stunned hands.

“Good,” the nurse tuts, “now you two spares, get out of.”

The feeling of Arthur collapsing against him, fills Eames with a warm satisfaction. He could have found himself alone here, fenced out of the quiet intimate celebrations of new parents with their newborn child. Instead they are exiled together, which means Eames can wraps his arms around Arthur and feel their heartbeats against one another’s chest.

“They’ll come for her,” Arthur finally says.

“Yes,” he has to agree, “yes they will. But not now. Not yet.”

“No,” Arthur says, nodding against him, reaching out to brush his lips against Eames’s cheek, “no not yet.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha wasn't that cute for like a minute? Okay back to the pain, now!

Eames watches the soft rise and fall of Arthur’s chest as he sleeps, the dark spread of runes leaving him in that state of dangerous vulnerability. He watches him, and he adores him, and he considers telling him that. He considers telling him everything. He even considers, very briefly and with much shame, telling Arthur exactly how old he is. He wonders if it would make Arthur turn away from him, somehow deceived or laugh at him and find him ridiculous. As contrary as it might seem, his beautiful Angelic soldier might find his age to be repulsive if he knew the truth of how small that number was. After all, he looked to Eames for protection and what would he really say if he knew that Eames with some good diet and exercise might still be alive if were he mortal. Would he laugh or recoil? And how much easier would it be for him to think of Eames as an old decrepit thing if he knew that Eames was 90 instead of 900.

He looks at their hands together on the robin’s egg sheets and drowns in a sudden sorrow, knowing that his will always look this way well into the age that everyone suspects he is. But Arthur’s, if they are very lucky, will thin and wrinkle and spot - and then one day it will be gone. One day Arthur will be gone.

Eames shoots up in bed and shakes himself, tries to shrug off the morbidity of his morning thoughts and hopes that it has come from nothing and that it will fade, but all day as they move about and around each other the thought lingers, a promise made to him by those older and wiser than he. Humans die, regardless, in spite of, and sometimes because of how much one loves them.

He tries to push the thought further away as they video chat with the children, Phillipa carrying James on her lap like the proudest sister. Eames hates himself for letting the thought touch them, tender and guileless and pure as they are.

When Dom comes on the screen, Eames cannot help but think that this mundane has been plagued by the same darkness.

“Arthur,” he says in the way that has been born between them, an unexpected brotherhood out of love for her, “I think you’d better come over – she needs you.”

Arthur sits up from his relaxed posed beside him, “What’s happened?”

Dom looks to the side and then over his shoulder where the children are playing.

“Mal just hasn’t… she hasn’t been herself the past few days. I know that she told you two to take some time to yourselves and …it’s just I think that’s part of it.”

“What do you mean, part of it?”

“The day she told you two to go she had gone on a hunt by herself. She told me not to say anything to you – that she only needed to clear her mind and didn’t want to call you out for it. Ever since that night there’s been something…something on her mind, something disturbing her. Last night as we made dinner, James came into the kitchen looking for a snack and she just… she looked at him and her eyes were – they were empty.”

“Dominick what are you saying?”

“I asked if we should invite you two over,” he whispered, “I don’t think Arthur has ever been away so many days in a year. And she said… she said, ‘there’s no point is there – it’s not really Arthur, just like it’s not really them’ and she …. she pointed the bread knife at James.”

Dominick stops, visibly trying to compose himself even as Arthur goes ramrod straight beside Eames.

“And it’s been like this all day,” he finally continues, a crack in his voice, “her staring off into the distance and saying things like that.”  

“Possessed,” Arthur declares, soft cold and terrified, “Dom, she’s possessed.”

“What? I – no she’s only out of sorts is all she…”

“Dom, listen to me. Listen to me and stop panicking,” Arthur whispers to him, “Eames will portal me to your house, but you need to take the children and come to him.”

“No,” Dom shakes his head, “when she talks about you – it’s like she thinks I’m the only one who’s real in the world. I need to stay with her. If you come here she could…”

“Dominick,” Eames finally says, “take the children to the back porch, I will open a portal. You can send them through it to me and Arthur will go through to you.”

Through the corner of his eye Eames can see Arthur preparing for battle and it brings his heart to his throat. He is watching him dress for demons on the way to his soulmate.

Eames says a few more words of caution to Dominick, explaining a simple ward of salt that a mundane with enough intent can pull off while he begins to prepare the portal. It is only another few minutes and then Arthur is at his side, shoulder to shoulder, but then he isn’t really. He isn’t his Arthur in the robin’s egg sheets and he isn’t the boy with all the fight in him. He is a scared man going to a strange war.

“Darling,” Eames whispers, his hands poised as the portal opens, “it’s going to be alright – isn’t it. You’re both going to be okay.”

In answer, Arthur kisses him. He kisses him like forever and he kisses him like goodbye.

Through the blur of the shimmering magic Eames can see the faint shape of people but nothing none of it makes any sense. There is a darkness that makes him want to close it up, shut all of it out immediately, and then his power begins to drain.

“You have to go through now, Arthur,” he says through suddenly labored breaths, “whatever is in her doesn’t want me there.”

Just as Arthur makes to break through the weakening portal, two bursts of pale hair are thrown from it, shaken and crying Arthur gathers them up in his arms.

“Arthur I’ll keep them safe, but I can’t hold this open much longer,” he chokes out. He looks into his eyes and see the terror and the anguish and the guilt in him and he wishes he could take it all away. He wishes that he was strong enough to make him stay or that he loved him a little less and could pull him away from her. But he knows keeping Arthur from Mal is like tearing his soul to shreds and so even if this is the hanging sword under which he woke today, Eames knows, there is no alternative. That is why he watches him step through the portal without protest. That is why he holds it open longer than his magic screams is possible. And that is why, with the last of his strength, he keeps it open long enough for Arthur’s beaten slashed up body to fall back through.

**Author's Note:**

> This would 100% not exist without jujubean <3<3<3


End file.
